First Look: The New D Magazine.com

There are a number of reasons we’re making this change, but foremost among those is that the means through which readers are accessing our online content have changed substantially during the last few years. Visits on smartphones and tablet computers now account for almost 30 percent of our traffic, and we expect that share to continue to increase.

It’s a problem because too much of our current website can’t be read — except via a series of ritualistic pinches and zooms — on the smaller screens of mobile devices. So we haven’t been delivering most of our content in the preferred format of a substantial number of our readers. That’ll change with our new site, built with what’s called a “responsive design.” Essentially that means we’ve tailored the presentation of each page of the site according to which type of device a user is viewing it on. The illustration above should give you a general sense.

But that’s far from all the fabulous new DMagazine.com will do for you. Readers will be able to comment on our articles and our restaurant, bar, and shopping directory listings for the first time. Our new galleries will allow us to run the beautiful photography of our articles and posts in a much more engaging and attractive context. Our navigation bar will snap into place as you scroll down the page, ensuring that it’s easier to stay oriented on the site. And our brand-new news page, which we’re calling The Daily, will pull together content from across all of our blogs in one addictively readable place.

Once the new site is up and running, I’ll be back to explain many of the new features in greater detail. Until then, let the great building-up of expectations begin. We’re excited. Feel free to follow suit.